Hot air ballooning, while a relatively safe sport, is not without attendant hazards, most of which involve inadvertent ignition of the fuel carried in the carriage for the purpose of burning and heating the air used to create relatively lower density conditions in the balloon envelope. Presently, hot air balloons overwhelmingly use wicker basket carriages into which are set one or more metal tanks containing liquid propane. If the wicker basket is involved in a crash, the propane tanks are often tossed about and various fittings may rupture to leak the gas, sometimes with disastrous consequences. In other instances, the wicker baskets have come into contact with high voltage electrical lines and massive passage of current into the propane tank may cause the tank to explode.
Yet another problem associated with the use of the standard wicker basket with one or more propane tanks is that the carriage is simply unable to hold enough individual tanks for sustained flight of many hours or days in duration. Trade-offs of crew member area for fuel capacity is necessitated, particularly wherein three relatively heavy crew members are in the standard basket during summertime or high ambient air temperature conditions, and large amoumts of fuel must be burned to sustain a sufficient pressure differential within the envelope to offset the weight of the envelope, basket and crew. This normally makes for flight of unfortunately short duration.
Additionally, the standard wicker basket is not jetisonible if an emergency is encountered, such as severe leakage of the propane tanks or explosion and fire caused by hitting high voltage lines. The present disclosure provides such a crew module in conjunction with a jetisonible carriage for emergency use.